With all the negativity around war let's talk about the best part of 4.0!

[Mycow8me]

about how good defiance feels now. Better than ever. So I think it's a shame that so much discussion revolves around dps-stance tanking and how gimped war is since it's no longer free to swap stances.

Maybe its because defiance is actually worse than ever? Defiance has unchained which gets rid of the 20% damage loss for a small duration that doesn't help us tank at all vs its Deliverance counterpart has a ginormous DPS increase from inner release for fel cleave spam. We lost bloodbath so our ability to Main tank with defiance is that much lower now, this is why I have been arguing that Unchained needs to be replaced with a Tank ability instead of a DPS increase... Unchained needs to be the warrior version of bloodbath with its own quirk.

Honestly most of our mitigation skills aside from inner beast are all usable while in deliverance, the only skill thats not is unchained and steelcyclone and both are dps skills. Ironic much. Unchained could be the turning point for defiance to me but its current state is just derp.

[whiskeybravo]

We lost bloodbath so our ability to Main tank with defiance is that much lower now

Be honest. How many times were you actually in Defiance with Bloodbath+Vengeance+OP Spam? It was better support for tanking in Deliverance. I mean, I miss seeing all those return heals as much as the next warrior, but lets be real, most warriors want to tank in Deliverance full time - regardless of any benefit from Defiance. Remember, Lord Warrior Xenosys himself said, "if you're tanking in Defiance you're doing it wrong"

I can't argue that Unchained shouldn't be changed, especially considering we do have a dedicated dps stance now. It's rather obvious they wanted to mimic the defiance skill branching, nothing inherently wrong with that, but with so many other things changed it's a wonder they didn't think to rework unchained in the process. More like Unchanged

[Mycow8me]

Be honest. How many times were you actually in Defiance with Bloodbath+Vengeance+OP Spam? It was better support for tanking in Deliverance. I mean, I miss seeing all those return heals as much as the next warrior, but lets be real, most warriors want to tank in Deliverance full time - regardless of any benefit from Defiance. Remember, Lord Warrior Xenosys himself said, "if you're tanking in Defiance you're doing it wrong"

You are only speaking in terms of garbage pulls. I'm talking in terms of main tanking a boss which is what defiance is about... Bloodbath was our HP weave between thrill and equilibrium cooldown. We lost it and our survivability is that much lower now. I dont care about the bloodbath+vengeance+OP spam, that was SE's shortsightedness on tanks with AOEs. Unchained could be changed to bloodrage and attach a regen affect to the next inner beast HP recovery for 20 seconds instead of what it currently is. There's lots of things SE could do but currently defiance is lacking.

Edit: And if you want me to "be honest" Main tanking on warrior isn't nearly as fun as off tanking because our toolkit for offtanking is that much stronger than our toolkit for maintanking due to its dps output... It's not even about bloodbath+vengeance+OP spam, its about making both our toolkits fun, intuitive, and serve their purpose and defiance as it stands is not all that intuitive or fun other than inner beast timing.

[whiskeybravo]

You are only speaking in terms of garbage pulls. I'm talking in terms of main tanking a boss which is what defiance is about... Bloodbath was our HP weave between thrill and equilibrium cooldown. We lost it and our survivability is that much lower now.

I'm sorry, but bloodbath could never save your ass main tanking a savage raid. It synergized naturally with vengeance and OP spam to provide some additional sustain for dungeons, and that's about it. You'd occasionally see some nice returns on crit Fell Cleaves, but that's not Defiance tanking. If you weren't specifically saving it for a huge pull then it was just used on cd or paired with berserk+internal release. Never as an actual damage reduction cooldown (cuz it wasn't)

Thank you for the honesty, though. High dps is fun, I always enjoyed pushing for the highest dps on my dragoon. For tanking, I find it most fun pulling a whole section in a dungeon and reducing the damage as much as possible, or seeing how much I can reduce a tankbuster down to. Shit, I got Titan HM in trial roulette the other day and still had fun IB'ing that tankbuster. So we all have our own opinions and that's fine

[Mycow8me]

I'm sorry, but bloodbath could never save your ass main tanking a savage raid. It synergized naturally with vengeance and OP spam to provide some additional sustain for dungeons, and that's about it. You'd occasionally see some nice returns on crit Fell Cleaves, but that's not Defiance tanking. If you weren't specifically saving it for a huge pull then it was just used on cd or paired with berserk+internal release. Never as an actual damage reduction cooldown (cuz it wasn't)

Well your wrong, it saved me many times because it increased the hp recovery from innerbeast and storms path that much more. Your only looking at it from an "instant" standpoint. It was a mitigation over time aspect which would help in the event that a healer goes down or healer MP is getting low or any other critical situation where you are trying to lessen the heals burden, or my other skills were on cooldown to weave HP till they are ready again. In fights like the Royal Mangerei for example, it could have been extremely useful due to the nature of the fight with constant DPS output on tanks. Not every encounter with the skill is the same. I seem to disagree with you. Strongly feel warriors need their HP weave skill back.

[whiskeybravo]

Strongly feel warriors need their HP weave skill back.

I don't disagree with that, I miss bloodbath as much as anyone, I just don't let the loss of a relatively minor ability ruin my perception of Defiance. The addition of Rampart and that other new +parry cd (can't remember the name) more than make up for the difference in mitigation. So, the place where missing bloodbath hurts the most is giant dungeon pulls. As a side note, I don't know why the devs got rid of it for tanks, but I'd be interested to see what the actual returns would be at level 70 with "proper" lv70 gear. It could've been that the returns were deemed insignificant. I mean when you are getting crit auto attacks from bosses in the 20k+ range, it just doesn't seem to me that bloodbath would really do all that much to help compared to straight damage reduction, particularly when our attack power is handcuffed such as it is (intended to be).